Government Affairs Program ACTION ALERT

Comments Sought on National Climate Change Assessment

(Posted 6-29-00; Action Completed on 8-11-00)

Update: The public comment period for the draft synthesis
report closed on August 11, 2000.

This update was originally sent out as an e-mail message to AGI's
member societies

IN A NUTSHELL: The US government is seeking public comments on
the first-ever national assessment of potential climate change impacts.
A draft synthesis report has been released for comment as have several
specific reports addressing impacts on individual sectors and regions of
the country. AGI encourages geoscientists to review the draft reports and
submit comments before the August 11, 2000 deadline.

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In 1990, President George Bush signed the Global Change Research Act
(PL 101-606) into law, establishing the U.S. Global Change Research Program
(USGCRP) to coordinate federal research on this topic. USGCRP was
charged to conduct a periodic assessment for the President and Congress
that: "(1) integrates, evaluates, and interprets the findings of the Program
and discusses the scientific uncertainties associated with such findings;
(2) analyzes the effects of global change on the natural environment, agriculture,
energy production and use, land and water resources, transportation, human
health and welfare, human social systems, and biological diversity; and
(3) analyzes current trends in global change, both human-induced and natural,
and projects major trends for the subsequent 25 to 100 years."

The National Assessment has three main components: regional analyses,
sectoral analyses, and a national synthesis. Starting in 1997, USGCRP held
a series of regional workshops around the nation as well as a National
Forum to gather input from a range of shareholders. Regional workshops
were held in every state and territory to encourage discussion among federal
agencies, the science community, stakeholder communities, and the interagency
committee for global change research in order to develop a comprehensive
assessment. Information from these meetings (available at http://www.nacc.usgcrp.gov/regions/)
helped USGCRP to prepare the regional and sector sections of the assessment.
Background information on the assessment is available at the USGCRP website
http://www.nacc.usgcrp.gov/.

The synthesis report -- "Climate Change Impacts on the United States:
the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change" -- has been
released in draft form for public comment. The draft report is available
at http://www.gcrio.org/NationalAssessment/
as a PDF document along with information on submitting comments and other
supporting documents. Because the synthesis report draws upon the findings
in the regional and sectoral reports, there has been some controversy over
the release of the draft synthesis before completion of most of these reports.
The draft regional and sectoral reports will be rolling out for public
comment over the next few months. Currently, draft reports on the health
sector (deadline: July 24th) and the metropolitan east coast region (deadline:
July 19th) are available for comment on the USGCRP website http://www.nacc.usgcrp.gov/.

The assessment examines scenarios that might arise from a business-as-usual
path, assuming no major interventions to reduce the global emissions of
greenhouse gases. Unlike the international climate change assessments
conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC), the US national assessment looks at potential
consequences at the national and regional scales and also addresses implications
for society and the economy.

A major theme in the report is that as a whole, the direct economic
impacts of climate change on the nation will be modest, but on the regional
and local scale, the impacts could be extensive. Simply put, impacts
will not be uniform across the nation. The report describes the vulnerability
of ecosystems to climate change and the economic implications of the disappearance,
transformation, or fragmentation of these ecosystems, including the near-term
increase in forest growth due to increased carbon dioxide levels.
The assessment concludes that more information is needed on the range of
climate change issues to develop national and local response plans.
An appendix to the assessment is a section on the future research needs
to give a more complete understanding of climate change impacts and responses.

The assessment provides information on possible climate change impacts
for various sectors and regions:

Vegetation and Biochemistry Scenarios

Socioeconomic Change

Native Peoples and Homelands

Human Health

Agriculture

Coastal Areas and Marine Resources

Water Resources

Forests

Northeast

Southeast

Midwest

Great Plains

West

Pacific Northwest

Alaska

Islands

How to CommentReview comments should be submitted by August 11, 2000 via e-mail as
a Microsoft Word or WordPerfect attachment using a separate file for the
Overview report and for each chapter of the Foundation report that is reviewed.
Review comments should be emailed to napubcmt@usgcrp.gov.
If e-mail submission is not possible, review comments may be submitted
via mail to: National Assessment Comments, Office of the U.S. Global Change
Research Program, 400 Virginia Avenue, SW, Suite 750, Washington, DC 20024.
When submitting comments by mail, please provide comments both as hardcopy
and on a 3.5" DS/HD disk (either Mac or IBM format) as a text file.
For further information contact the National Assessment Review Coordinator,
Office of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, Suite 750, 400 Virginia
Avenue, SW, Washington DC 20024; or telephone 202-488-8630, fax at 202-488-8681,
or send an e-mail to office@usgcrp.gov
.